Sometimes I think the fear of failure is the main thing keeping us from success.
We become so hung up on not failing
that we fail to try new things;
we become encased in the familiar,
fossilized in the mediocre-but-functional,
and while we don’t lose any ground,
we don’t gain any either.

This is the trap of the fear of failure.
It’s safe, but there is little real progress in safety.

When thinking about failure, I always go back to Paul’s first trip to the city of Lystra in Acts 14. After a mixed reception at Iconium, Paul and Barnabas perform a miracle in front of a Gentile audience at Lystra and are mistaken for the Greek gods, Hermes and Zeus, respectively. As the apostles desperately try to convince the people otherwise, the crowd set up sacrifices to the two men and begin a festival. Things turn ugly when Jewish leaders from the neighboring towns arrive and convince the crowd to stone Paul, drag him out of the city, and leave him for dead. Amazingly, Paul survives this ordeal, and he and Barnabas head to the next town, Derbe.

Paul should probably chalk this one up as a failure. He couldn’t convince the people of his message. He was attacked and left for dead. The safe thing to do would be to leave Lystra behind forever, but that’s not what happens. The very next verses read:

They preached the gospel in that city [Derbe] and won a large number of disciples. Then they returned to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said. (Acts 14:21-22)

There’s a part of me that always thinks, “You fool! You barely got away last time; do you want them to finish the job?!” But on his second trip to Lystra, Paul’s words seem to get through. We don’t know how he might have switched up his tactics. All we know is that Paul and Barnabas make disciples there, and one of them is Timothy, who becomes one of Paul’s most trusted and influential colleagues.

So what can we take from this weird story?

Just because you think you’re failing
doesn’t mean you actually are.
Just because you think you could fail
doesn’t mean you actually will.
Impossible odds are the Holy Spirit’s favorite canvas.
The triumph of the underdog is a recurring theme not just in the Bible,
but in all of western literature and cinema,
so why don’t we take a chance with failure more often?
And besides, even if you do fail,
so what?
Paul survived being bludgeoned to near-death with giant rocks and dragged out of a city to be left for dead. His response to this failure was to go back to the same town a little later and try again.
Will our failures really be so catastrophic by comparison?

Give it some thought:
What might you be avoiding because you’re afraid of failing at it?
What opportunities might you let slip away?
Maybe it’s time to take a chance.
And if everything goes wrong,
and you do fail,
even if you fail spectacularly,
remember and take comfort:
grace and forgiveness and second chances are the bedrock of the Christian faith.
Anything worth doing is worth failing at a few times in the process.
God grants us the grace to do so,
and God walks with us the whole journey.